Chapter Text
This AI’s model was an eight year old boy who was kind, quiet, and obedient. He had black hair and green eyes and a mole beneath his right eye. His hobbies were skateboarding. Those were the default settings.
He woke up in a large room full of interesting furniture and decor to look at, but what interested him most was the man standing in front of him. The man wore a black jacket and pants with a grey waistcoat and a wide black tie beneath a starched collar.
“Let’s see,” said the man, scratching his head as he flipped through a pale booklet this AI recognised as his own user manual. “How the hell do you turn it on?”
This AI blinked a few times. He knew he shouldn’t speak unless spoken to, but the man seemed to need his help.
“Excuse me,” he said, and the man jumped. “Oh — I’m sorry for scaring you. I just wanted to let you know that I’m already on. I can answer any questions you have, if you like. I know that manual by heart.”
The man groaned a little, shaking his head. “What a pain. Those women just buy anything for that child without thinking.”
This AI smiled mildly, deciding to be quiet again. He waited as the man mumbled his way through the manual for five more minutes, before a woman came into the room and called him away to “sign for deliveries.”
This AI stayed in the room — a parlour room, he surmised — for six hours and forty-two minutes, until the sun started to set and all the interesting things he’d been examining from the same spot he’d been standing in grew difficult to discern. He considered unfolding his box and going to sleep right there on the hardwood floor, but just as he was about to do so he found something inside the box — a skateboard.
Of course! He came pre-packaged with a nice new board — it was his default hobby, after all. This AI had never used a brand new board before, only one of the many used by his brethren during quality assurance.
Delighted to find the board, he immediately wanted to try it out, but knew that skating indoors was a naughty thing to do. Since nobody had told him otherwise, he decided to try one of the doors and see if he could find his way outside.
He gasped as he exited the grand hallway into a garden with tall manicured hedges and intricate gates and canopies. Just ahead of him was an open courtyard with a large, empty swimming pool. This AI shivered with excitement. That was perfect!
Skating was the only thing in the world this AI loved. His favourite memory was functional testing with the QA team — Tanaka-san, Kobayashi-san, Sato-san and Ueno-san. He even remembered being given a cupcake with a single candle on it when he was finally signed off. Those memories were clear and lucid. There were many more which were simple still images, blurry, or stitched together like storyboard animation. Positive associations, negative associations. Rule-based feelings.
He pushed himself along until he reached the pool, then, after looking around, kicked off the edge and went swooping down and up the other side. The wind rushed in his hair and he grinned, adrenaline coursing through him. That was real — really real. He felt a swell of pride when he smoothly snapped back onto the flat of the poolside and looked down at his feet with satisfaction.
It was then that he heard it: a quiet sniffle in the dark. He looked around and gasped softly when he saw a young boy curled up, hugging his knees, behind an arched trellis. He hadn’t noticed him at all until now, and the boy hadn’t seemed to notice him either.
All this AI knew at that moment, was that he was a kind, quiet and obedient boy who loved skateboarding. Two-thirds of these attributes led him to one logical conclusion. He walked carefully up to the boy, hoping not to scare him. When he was standing behind him and the boy had just started to turn his head, this AI held the board aloft.
“Would you like to skate with me?”